by Douglas Messerli
A young telephone operator in the Asai
Pharmaceutical Company, Ayako Murai (Isuzu Yamada) is in love with a fellow
colleague, Nishimura (Kensaku Hara), a love which he returns with several
excuses and lies. At nights Mr. Nisimura has been accompanying the company
director’s wife, Sonosuke (Benkei Shiganoya), to the theater. Ayako notices him
being paid for his services, but the young man denies everything, not
recognizing his own behavior as a kind of prostitution. Unhappy at home, the
company head, Sumiko (Yoko Umemura)—presented from the beginning of the film as
a petulant, selfish, and abusive man—attempts to involve the young Ayako in an
affair, which she rejects.
When it becomes apparent that her father, who has embezzled 300 Yen from
the company for which worked, will soon be imprisoned if we cannot come up with
the money, Ayako attempts to borrow the money from Nisimura, but he refuses.
Although Ayako is a spirited young woman, arguing against her father for his
transgressions, she finally agrees to become Asai’s mistress so that she might
raise the money to save her father. Leaving home, Ayako enters a new nightmare
world that might be described as the inverse of Dorothy’s Oz (The Wizard of Oz was shot in the US
three years later). The old Asai, setting her up in an apartment, forces her to
redo her hair in the manner of married woman so that he might appear with her
in public. And much of the day she is forced to sit alone awaiting the return
of her unfeeling lover.
When Asai’s wife encounters the two of them at a puppet play, he forces
another of his employees to insist that it was him who is seeing Ayako, not Asai, deceiving the incensed wife. But
soon after, she perceives the real truth when Asai’s doctor mistakenly shows up
at their house to care for Asai, when, in fact, he has fallen ill in Ayako’s
apartment. The affair ends, abruptly, disgracing Ayako.
Running into Nisimura in the street, the two come together again, he
asking Ayako to marry him, but embarrassed by her situation, she rushes off. Later,
however, she becomes determined to seek out Nisimura, accepting his offer and
admitting her past. If his love is strong enough, she will marry him, freeing
herself from her disagreeable life.
Meanwhile, Ayako discovers from her sister that her college brother has
run out of tuition, and she agrees to take up with another unpleasant
businessman, Fujino (Eitarō Shindō) to secretly raise money for her brother’s
education. She raises the money, and attempts to fool Fujino into giving extra
money so that she can marry Nisimura. But when she walks out on him, Fujino
calls the police, accusing her of soliciting from him. Ayako, meanwhile,
attempts to explain her past to a horrified Nisimura, but is interrupted by the
police who arrest her. At police headquarters Nisimura denies any involvement
with Ayako, denying any desire to marry her, and the young girl is forced to
admit to a crime she had committed only in search a way to further help her
family and give herself a better life.
Released by the police, she returns home, hoping for at least some
appreciation for her acts, like Dorothy, speaking the cliché “There’s no place
like home”; Mizoguchi’s irony in that statement almost breaks our hearts, as reality
in Osaka is shown to be the reverse of Dorothy’s Kansas homestead. Over a
family meal, of which she never offered a bite, Ayako is shunned by her
brother, berated by her father, and even derided by her younger sister, cast
out from her home.
The film’s last scene shows her walking along the side of the railroad
tracks, pondering what might be the “disease of delinquency” for which her
family and society have condemned her. Clearly, in answer to that, she must
attempt a voyage into a strange new world once more. As in so many Mizoguchu
works, women—particularly strong and nonsubservient women—are abused by
Japanese society, ultimately having little choice but use their bodies in order
to survive. The delinquency of which Ayako, in the end, is accused, is actually
a product of the delinquency of nearly all the film’s male figures, who
together scheme, lie, cheat, and abuse the young girls they encounter. And,
accordingly, the independent women end up as mere figures of service as if they
had never left home in the first place. The only successful woman in this world
(head of the Woman’s Association) is the unloving and tart tongued Mrs. Asai,
and it is she, as we observe in an early scene, who sleeps with a version of
Dorothy’s beloved dog; without a scarecrow, woodsman, or lion to accompany her,
Ayako is completely on her own, with only her own brain, heart, and courage to
help her move forward.
Los
Angeles, July 29, 2013
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThank you because you have been willing to share information with us. we will always appreciate all you have done here because I know you are very concerned with our. dominoqq
ReplyDelete